The gaming industry has enjoyed a substantial increase in popularity over the last decade. This increased popularity has produced an extremely competitive market for game operators.
Despite the increasingly competitive nature of the industry, a game operator responsible for paying out prizes may be unwilling to rely on innovations developed by others if the game operator lacks the expertise to understand the technology, its potential for error, and how it will impact the game operator's prize obligations. Therefore, to facilitate the introduction and acceptance of innovations into this competitive market, a system is desired that will shift responsibility for prize disbursement to a game sponsor, typically the innovator, who is more knowledgeable about the operation of the innovation and more capable of predicting and preventing its malfunction.
However, a system in which the game operator conducts the game but the game sponsor is responsible for paying winners will encourage fraud by game operators who can alter game situations to generate excessive winners. Additionally, game sponsors may not want to be burdened with the details of operating the game on their own. Consequently, a method is desired for operating a game in which a game sponsor can agree to reimburse the game operator for all prizes disbursed, but be assured that the game operator will not fraudulently generate winners.
Additionally, game operators may choose to conduct a wide range of games. Thus, to prevent continual re-design, a system is desired that allows a game sponsor to generate random results for a wide variety of different games conducted by multiple operators.